Tesla New Battery Plant Cements China's Place in Energy Storage
Tesla Inc. will build a large new battery factory in Shanghai, further cementing China's place at the top of the global energy storage supply chain.
The US electric car pioneer will manufacture its Megapack large-scale energy-storage unit in the new facility, which adds to its factory for EVs in Shanghai. The company led by Elon Musk, who is said to have visited China last weekend, made the announcement at a signing ceremony for the project in Shanghai on Sunday. Tom Zhu, Tesla's senior vice president of automotive, and Shanghai government officials including Vice Mayor Wu Qing attended, with Tesla Vice President Tao Lin signing the contract.
Construction is scheduled to begin in the third quarter of this year and the plant will commence production in the second quarter of 2024, the company said in a statement.
China already had more than 1,400 gigawatt-hours of battery manufacturing capacity, with another 6,000 gigawatt-hours under construction or announced. The US has the second-biggest pipeline of about 1,000 gigawatt-hours of capacity, but the vast majority of that has yet to be built.
Unlike most battery production, which mainly goes to the electric vehicle market, the Megapack factory will build cells for grid-scale energy storage, a much smaller sector. There were about 19.3 gigawatt-hours of installed stationary battery storage at the end of 2020, according to the International Energy Agency. That's likely to grow to more than 150 gigawatt-hours by 2026.
Musk, however, has a much grander vision for the sector, expecting storage to pair with renewable energy to do much of the heavy lifting in decarbonizing electricity and greening industrial sectors. Tesla's master plan forecasts about 46,200 gigwatt-hours of
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